Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi (also known as Mevlana, which means “our guide”) was a 13th-century Persian scholar, Sufi mystic and poet. He spent most of his life in the area of Konya Turkey.

Rumi taught spiritual fulfillment through love, connection and tolerance and wrote volumes on the subject. He encouraged the use of poetry and music to break through the temporal veil to universal wisdom. Members of the Mevlevi Order are also known as Whirling Dervishes because of their spinning Sema ceremony. Click to read more about the Sema.

Rumi’s message is positive and open and has had wide appeal across religions and cultures for hundreds of years. His tomb in Konya remains a place of pilgrimage today.

look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be